767 Oh, Canada.

There are tons of songs I could have chosen to use for the joke, but I went with the Canadian anthem because Canada will endure. While bands will come and go, while stars fade to obscurity, Canada will endure.

I got the weirdest spam email today. It was a really long message about Catwoman, but the link they gave as a place I should link back to was clearly to do with furniture. I’m going to post it, with annotations:

Hello there, (What up, G?)

As you run a site with an interest in comics, (Sort of…) you will no doubt have a love for the well-known vixens gracing the comic and superhero worlds. (That doesn’t necessarily follow.) Since her first DC appearance in 1940, probably the most infamous femme fatale is Catwoman – but who would portray her sassiness (So sassy!) to perfection? (A woman of some sort?) This illustrated article takes a look: (Well whooptie shit…)

While Anne Hathaway (Who?) has just been named as the new Catwoman, there are a few potential starlets who could stand in for her in an emergency. (Is this a big concern? Is she in mortal peril often?) The article features some who could make a fantastic feline (They can lick their privates?) and would look great in the iconic catsuit (as well as a few left with the sour milk). (Fuck whoever wrote that last line.)

Anyone who has an interest in comics could (Could being a very important operative in this sentence…) find this entertaining and fun to read. (But likely not…) As such, I’d like to welcome you to share it with your readers, who may have some of their own actress suggestions. (Eat a dick! These readers are mine, all mine! Mwahahahahahahaha!) A link back to the original source would be appreciated when sharing. (Well of course it would. You have a sucky article and I have an awesome comic.)

At the same time, if you have any content you feel our readers would benefit from and would like us to consider linking to, please send it to me. (Link to my content forever! It is superior!)

Best Regards,

Claire (Ironically the surname given in the header was Thomas.)

What I find myself wondering is was this message hijacked by a real site in an attempt to get nerds to buy furniture? Why go to so much trouble to write this message only to blow it by not hiding where the link goes? What was the thought process? It intrigues me to no end.

It almost has to be hijacked. But what site is out there soliciting links to their articles? Who was this stolen from? Why did they do such a crappy job of making it appealing to nerds? It’s written like ad copy. Fans of things don’t write like this, do they? maybe they wanted to sound professional really badly. Like, we don’t just have a site with a bunch of lame articles and quizzes about comics, we’re really a for serious news source! C’mon you guys! Read our article! You guys? You suck you guys!

I get a lot of very strange emails. It can be very difficult to figure out if people are being serious or just trying to scam you. What’s really weird is that if they aren’t they get SUPER ANGRY if you doubt them. I don’t fucking know you, dude. You could be anyone. I mean what internet have YOU been on for the last 15 years? When I last checked it was crawling with people who want to cheat you out of your money. Incredulity is a survival instinct.

My experience has been that nobody is more outraged than an amateur scammer caught red handed. I think the best example I’ve ever seen comes from way back when I used to ride the bus on a regular basis.

I’ve observed two approaches to getting a ride without paying the fare.

By far the most common I’ve seen was to try and sneak on without paying. There are numerous variations on this particular theme, none of them effective. In virtually every case, the perpetrator would become incredibly, foam at the mouth, angry when caught. Such people never got a free ride as far as I could see.

The second aproach is the one I used myself several times. Its really simple; approach the meter, open your wallet… “oops, not enough money”, calmly turn around and get off the bus. Usually, you don’t even make it all the way to turning around, before the driver just waves you onto the bus. Of course, you can’t play this card too often, and you have to be prepared to wait for the next bus… Think of it this way; if the driver isn’t letting you ride without paying, you weren’t going to be riding that bus anyway.

Regardless, seems to me that nobody gets as mad as a cheater caught in the act.

Okay. Your issue has problems. Mostly in the way you expressed it. Firstly, it’s not illegal for ladies to want to get to know other ladies, even if they are dumb enough to end a sentence with “; ) : ) lOl”. It’s not even immoral. I suppose I can understand your last sentiment a little. I’m a guy, and as far as I know I’m straight. And I think women have a lot to offer in a relationship, but I can understand why you might not be interested. But I can not believe you when you say “I’m a straight women…”. Largely because you mixed your singular and plural. “women” is the plural form of “woman”. You cannot possibly be “a straight women”. Unless somebody created a way for multiple humans to share a consciousness. But I’m reasonably sure I would have heard if they had.

Wait, but… you DID share this with your readers. I’m reading it right now, all because of you. It seems you fell INTO THEIR TRAP!

Anyway, who says sofas and sectionals have nothing to do with cat woman? If memory serves (And I’m not looking this up so I might be 100% wrong) she spent a lot of time lounging on soft furniture during the Adam West Batman series. Maybe they just want to sell you some kind of commemoritive couch?

This misheard lyric syndrome has a name: Mondegreens. Sylvia Wright wrote in the mid-1950′s that as a child she had misinterpreted a line of the poem The Bonny Earl O’Moray:

They hae slain the Earl O’ Moray,
And laid him on the green

Which she misheard as, “And Lady Mondegreen.”

I get your frustration with the bogus Spam scam eMail. Back in the dial-up days, I used to get upset with these clowns for eating up my bandwidth. I hated having some dirtbag burn up two minutes of download time just to get me to buy some $#¡† I never wanted in the first place. My blood pressure’s much lower since I got broadband…

But I don’t care anymore, now that the deposed God-Emperor of Nigeria is going to meake me seriously rich. And it only cost me $20,000 to open the bank account for him!

Counter by selling them enlargement spam,etc. as they are trying to sell you stuff, only take over their site with pop-ups. Easier then ever to do this, just say yes to said other spammer and use the URL you were sent as the ‘reply here’ adress for billing information and related. THen block both URLs from your emaiil and laugh merrily.

By Thomas’s viewpoint the only way ghosts would be real is if something made a smiley in a fractal pattern or whacked him upside the head, which may yet happen here. *crosses fingers

I would think that Ghosts would be made of Bioelectric energy, the same kind that the human body produces. Since energy can be neither created nor destroyed, one would assume that the energy that runs and is created by the human body would have to go somewhere, be it into the atmosphere, or some ‘other’ plane of existence.

Thusly I wouldn’t be in complete disbelief that said energy, being of the same origin, would congregate in another place at another time, especially a place where much of that energy was created.

I don’t mean to offend you by ruining your belief, but I feel I must point out the flaw in your logic. While it is true that the human body (and those of most other animals and even plants) Do run on a sort of “bio-electricity”, that term is somewhat misleading. For many years now, we’ve been conditioned to think that all electricity and electrical effects are more or less the same and have to do with the movement of electrons. This is true in almost all modern technological applications of electricity, most of which use free-flowing electrons in a metal or semi-conductor. But the human body is not made of metal. Nor is it made of silicon, germanium, or any other known semiconductor. In fact, no part of the human body will readily conduct and electrical current. That is because our bodies rely on organic chemistry, which mostly uses nonmetals, but also includes a couple of halogens and some key alkali metals. Metals only appear in the human body in trace quantities, and are mostly used for the transportation of Oxygen using hemoglobin (Well, that’s what Iron is used for, anyway. I honestly haven’t the faintest idea what a body uses magnesium for…).
The “bio-electricity” used in cells is not based on electrons. It’s based on positively charged particles. Sometimes it’s hydrogen ions (single protons), sometimes it’s sodium or potassium. Unlike in electronics, where we use positively and negatively charged wires with rubber or another insulator to conduct a charge, our bodies do it by using proteins to shove a bunch of positive ions to the other side of a membrane. When they do, the far side of the membrane becomes positively charged and by comparison the near side is negatively charged. The problem is that unless the cell membrane is there, the fluids on either side of the pump proteins will mix and result in a net zero charge. The propagation of signals on neurons is based on a similar concept, and likewise cannot function without a membrane. Unless there are cell membranes and a bunch of positive ions floating around in the air, this kind of “bio-electric energy” won’t be found outside of a living (or very recently deceased) being. You did mention Conservation of Energy, which is commendable. You may pat yourself on the back, if you like. Unfortunately, there is little mystery in where the “bio-electric energy” from a deceased person goes. The whole thing was based on a buildup of ions on one side of a membrane. This was used by the cell as a sort of pumping mechanism for larger molecules, utilizing another protein that show up on cell membranes called Ion Channels. Ion Channels are basically just small holes in the cell membrane, supported by a structure of protein. Sometimes they also have a cap on one side so the cell can regulate how much stuff comes through. The reason they’re called Ion Channels is because they don’t simply let things wander through. Because of the buildup of ions outside the cell, there are a lot of ions that are floating around in the water outside the cell that all would like to get in. The Ion Channels allow them to do so, albeit in a somewhat slower fashion than they would preffer, which is where the Ion Channels get their name. The cool part is that as the ions flow through the channel, they drag along a quantity of water with them, and anything that happened to be dissolved in that water (such as sugar, Oxygen, or any of a number of nutrients). After a creature dies, it’s heart stops pumping blood, and the various kinds of cells that make up different parts of it’s body all die at varying rates, depending on how much oxygen they require and how long they can operate anaerobically without it. After a cell dies, the Ion pumping proteins no longer receive the energy they need to function, so they stop pumping. Then, over time, the ion levels on either side of the membrane begin to equalize by a natural process of diffusion until there’s no appreciable “bio-electric energy” left. To put it all in simpler terms: the energy and order that was a living organism all dissolves into the chaos of a dead organism by the various processes of Entropy.

I would like to mention (mostly for the fun of it and not because I’m saying there’s really something paranormal about it) that cell membranes are remarkably similar to soap bubbles. If you were to suppose that a soap bubble could support an ion pump system, it might lead to interesting questions about what happens to the energy of a person that dies in a bubble bath.

Again, I’m not saying there’s anything paranormal going on there. But I would like to point out that the inclusion of bubble baths (in my mind at least) takes the study of paranormal events and communication from beyond the grave out of the dim, dusty morbidity and into a more cheerful and fun place.

Um, carbon has some semiconductor properties, it just has a higher minimum resistance than would be desired for any type of computing device. When I was in high school chemistry, we studied a periodic table that depicted carbon as a maybe semiconductor. (The table in question was outdated, but at one point in time, the classification was debated.) Iron isn’t abysmal at conducting electricity either.

Furthermore, human bodies actually conduct electricity well enough for household voltage to be problematic. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t need to worry about getting electrocuted by household electricity. You might be interested in the early research in the effects of galvanic currents on frog muscles.

But didn’t he say that mishearing the lyrics was his subconscious trying to find the nearest state of understanding? So if that’s the first word he thinks of, wouldn’t it mean that he thinks of homely when he thinks of Canada?

“Free of the rape of progress”
Perhaps… but we are making some pretty suggestive moves on our true north strong and free…
*Cough-Oilsands-clearcutting-global warming-pollution-Cough*
“How dear to us thy broad domain from east to western sea”

Good on Thomas for knowing the anthem of his neighbour… I know I don’t know “Star Spangled Banner” at all… even mishearing is something… Go Canada!

I know what you mean, they let themselves down in a few minute flaws, such as
‘please deposit the moneys at:
honestymoniescom/charity_save_the_children_and_kitten_campaign/this_is_genuine/national_bank_of_uganda

I have a friend that sings Dirty Deeds done dirt cheap as dirty deeds done to sheep, but pretty sure that’s creativity. Another friend thought that the line in Kokomo was “we’ll be falling in love to the rhythm of a ceiling fan. Think he was envisioning a horribly out of balance fan. His brother thought Return to Sender was Return Lucinda.

When I was a kid, I read a book where a little girl said “turn on the dawnzer, turn on the dawnzer!” “what’s a dawnzer?” her mother asked… “You know, it’s what makes the Lee light!, the Dawnzer Lee Light!”

There was one spambot on a forum I go to that actually did google searches for posts that might be relevant to a given thread, then copy and pasted the results into posts. It was actually pretty believable. Spam appears to be rapidly achieving some level of basic sentience. Today it’s catwoman. But soon it will be telling you why it likes your comic before it links you to furniture store websites and tells you that it thinks Nina would shop there.

I’m not sure I knew such a rarely-used term as “homely” as a child. I and all the other Canadian children tended to learn that song as “home and naked land” (some few even unintentionally. :P)

@Ken,
I found that quite often when working the tech service phones for Barnes&Noble and SprintPCS (both client companies had us only taking calls from the US only market, apparently no one in the USA will put up with this kind of abuse. :P) There are people who call around every month and try to get out off paying all their bills that way… every month. They’ll just keep dialing until they get a call-handler who is either lazy or timid enough to be bullied into it. I have no doubt when they succeed, they pat themselves on the back and congradulate themselves on their “cleverness”.

Frankly, I was usually just shocked Natural Selection hadn’t removed such people from the gene pool by now… or at least how they remain out of prison…

There is something about US culture, some examples proven to children at a young age that carries forward into adulthood unchecked… this strange belief that the louder or angrier person gets their way (imagine the child throwing a loud temper tantrum in a public place, and his humiliated parent gives him whatever he wants to quiet down… setting a terrible precident). In other countries (unfortunately not always my own in recent years :(), spoiled children learn very quickly that such behavior doesn’t get tollerated, much less rewarded.

@Hinoron:
As a former Barnes&Noble storefront drone in the US, I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve seen exactly that situation. Small child misbehaves, parent threatens to leave without buying the book or candy or whatever the kid has in their hand, child calms down for 20 seconds, then resumes problem behavior, cycle repeats a few times, parent gets tired and either forgets to carry through on their threat, or quietly decides they’d rather not go to the trouble. You know that kid grows up feeling that discipline is mostly just ignorable empty talk.

There’s also a kind of anti-responsibility ideology that’s come to power on the part of retail companies in the last couple decades over here. I dunno how it is in other countries, but in the US corporate chain stores have abandoned the “you break it, you buy it” concept in favor of “the customer is always right, even when he’s a foul mouthed loon”. Employees are encouraged to allow customers to more or less freely abuse the merchandise, premises, and staff on the basis that the profit from their repeat business outweighs than the loss from their bad habits. People who are quiet and reasonable in their complains are given the hard liner treatment, while people who complain loudly and profanely are given their way, on the basis that they are much more likely to disrupt other customers, leading to lost sales and/or bad word of mouth.

After a couple years of doing that job, I really started to notice how the near ubiquitousness of all this in pretty much every customer service-type environment was having an actual Skinnerian effect on people: basically training normally considerate people to unconsciously act like spoiled 5 year olds when they’re out in public. After that, I kinda started to feel like working retail was unethical, in a one-more-cigarette-butt-on-the-beach sort of way.

Speaking of psychology, blame shifting that grows angrier and more vehement with opposition is a pretty well documented habit among con men and domestic abusers. That’s usually treated as a deliberate, cynical tactic, but from what I’ve seen I suspect it’s a common unconscious thing too: if someone’s pissed and irrational enough, feeling righteous becomes waaaayyyy more important than actually being right.

Ha thats awesome at least it was nrothren broader patrol and not the southrenn boarder patrol the fella’s down there don screw around atleast crossing from canada to US or vice versa you can have a little fun with the guys there